smartphone app aims to eliminate counterfeiting tagged posts

This is a gold microchip. Credit: Lancaster University

1st demo of patented technology smartphone app aims to eliminate counterfeiting. Counterfeit products are a huge problem – from medicines to car parts, fake technology costs lives. Every year, imports of counterfeited and pirated goods around the world cost nearly US $0.5 trillion in lost revenue. Counterfeit medicines alone cost the industry over US $200 billion every year. They are also dangerous to our health – around a third contain no active ingredients, resulting in a million deaths a year. As the Internet of Things expands, there is the need to trust the identity of smart systems, such as the brake system components within connected and driverless cars.

But researchers exhibiting at the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition be...